


It Goes Like This

by oleksiacois



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Pining, sidney crosby's quest to become a dad, this is kind of a kidfic i think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 11:46:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13589391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oleksiacois/pseuds/oleksiacois
Summary: So in the end, Sid doesn’t have a partner, doesn’t have children of his own; all he has are awkward, impossible crushes and memories of rookies who call him ‘dad’ and run away.





	It Goes Like This

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been sitting on this for, like, a year, but I finally talked myself into posting it and doing it as a chapter story. I'm not good at those which is why you will more often see me posting long oneshots. But, well, I'm gonna try my darned best for this one! Motivation! Woo!

If he goes back, Sid might say it started after he opened his hockey school — because honestly, he should have known better than to think he could see and teach and play with that many children on a daily basis without being affected. Maybe it was having to watch his friends and teammates making families of their own over the years, marrying the loves of their lives, having kids together. He could potentially go as far as to say it started when he was a kid himself, when he held his sister for the first time. But—

But if he’s really, really being honest, he thinks it started like this:

He’s just won his second Cup and he’s on top of the world. There’s nothing that could get him down. His teammates are screaming and hugging around him and it feels like vindication. One Cup had been good. Two is better. Two means they _deserved_ the first one, that it wasn’t just a fluke. And — and anyone can tell you that things like this, important things like this, always come in threes. It might take a while but Sid thinks he’s maybe halfway into his professional career, in terms of years, and right now, he can do anything. Right here in the locker room, right after game six against San Jose, he could do anything.

His cheeks are near implosion from the force of his smile and he’s just, just thinking about that, about his own ability to do anything he wants to (and he thinks maybe that means he could double back to Geno and maybe hug him again, maybe get to feel that stupid playoff beard against his cheek again, maybe maybe maybe) when Shearsy comes up to him.

Shearsy looks like he’s been baptized with the champagne, soaked and glowing. He smiles hugely at Sid, and Sid can’t help but smile back. Partially because he was already smiling, but all the same.

“Uh, hey, Sid,” he says, sounding not one-hundred percent sure of his welcome, which is ridiculous, because Sid thinks Shearsy is great. Shearsy helped them win the Cup. They have the Cup. That’s _great_.

“You were great out there,” Sid tells him, because Shearsy still looks like he thinks Sid would rather be talking to someone else, and that’s just not fair. “I can’t wait to see what you can accomplish when you play a full season with us.”

It seems like the right thing to say, because the rookie’s smile goes from bright to blinding, so much so that Sid has to glance away. He makes brief eye contact with Tanger, who immediately takes the split-second look as an invitation to come over and join the conversation, because he’s a shit like that. But he’s a shit who helped them win the Cup. They won the Cup and that’s _great_.

“We won the Cup,” Sid half-shouts when Tanger pulls him into a hug, because apparently that’s the only sentence he can form at the moment. “It’s so great.”

“It sure fucking is,” Tanger laughs, thumping him on the back. Sid sees Shearsy shift out of the corner of his eye, looking hesitant again, which is not right at all. Tanger seems to notice too because he turns to Shearsy next, saying, “Hey, kid, nice work!”

“Thanks, you too,” Shearsy says reflexively, and Tanger laughs again. Shearsy bites his lip, looking back at Sidney. “Hey, so, um, I just wanted to say—” He stops, eyes cutting to Tanger, who’s now listening with way too much amusement.

“Yes?” Sid does his best to sound encouraging, because rookies have come up to him at the end of the season before, and he knows how this goes by now.

“That, um, I know I haven’t been here long, relatively,” Shearsy starts, and here it comes: “but this year, you’ve been really — um, helpful? I — I was kind of nervous to be breaking into the NHL, especially — especially on _this_ team. With you guys. But you made me feel really welcome and, and just like a part of the team. So. Thank you.”

“You _are_ a part of the team,” Sid says. It feels important that Shearsy knows that.

“I know, but I mean — never mind. I mean — I — I’m just grateful for — how comfortable you’ve made me feel here. You’ve just — you’ve been a really great dad these past few months—” Shearsy stops, visibly thinks over his words, and then his cheeks colour. “ _I mean captain._ ”

Tanger snorts.

“Oh my god, don’t look at me,” Shearsy says as Tanger’s laughter starts to build. “Forget I said that. Forget I exist. I’m — I’m going to go.” He bolts.

“Tanger,” Sid says scoldingly.

“What?” says Tanger. “That was adorable. Hilarious and adorable.”

“You didn’t have to laugh at him that much.”

“You’re just upset because you finally got a kid of your own, and I scared him away,” Tanger teases.

Sid almost tells him it’s not the first time a rookie has called him ‘dad’ — which is true, it’s just the first time it was overheard — but he doesn’t honestly think that would help. And also—

_You finally got a kid of your own_ , for some reason, sticks in his head. He finds himself thinking, _But I don’t_ , and being surprised by the pang of sadness that gives him. Sid shouldn’t be capable of sadness right now. They’ve just _won_ the _Cup_ , which is great, and Sid is Sidney Crosby and Sidney Crosby can do anything.

Except, probably, manifest a child out of thin air. It’s weird that he kind of wants to.

He’s still thinking about it when he gets home that night, late enough to actually be the next morning. The empty house is distressingly quiet in comparison to the company of aprofessional hockey team high on the Stanley Cup. It sends his ears ringing.

Out of nowhere he wonders if next time — because there’ll be a next time; things come in threes, that’s just how it goes — if next time he’ll have a baby to put in the Cup, if he’ll have a partner he can take pictures with. And then he wonders if he’ll be able to _share_ those pictures, to let people know that that’s his partner and that’s his baby there, by the Cup, in the Cup. The thought makes him breathless, makes his chest tight and hot, but he squeezes his eyes shut and ignores it.

Sid stumbles his way into bed, thinks about Conor calling him ‘dad,’ and knows he’ll have a hangover in the morning.

 

Because the thing is, Sid realized he preferred boys when he was young, and it went like this:

There are guys on Sid’s hockey team who make his cheeks warmer than physical exertion can account for. There are boys in his classes who make him nervous, heart thrumming and fingers tingling, and he can’t help turning his whole body towards them when they speak. And there are men on television who make his mouth dry and his stomach twist, but it takes until the second or third time he looks at Peter from english class and wants to _touch_ that he realizes it’s maybe not something every other boy feels.

In the locker room, the other guys talk about sex in a way that comes pre-packaged with the idea of long hair and large breasts and wet, pink holes. Sid always thought they were exaggerating the appeal. It takes him probably too long, in hindsight, to realize his feelings for other boys are at all the same thing. He thinks some girls are pretty and that must mean he’s attracted to them, and if he’s attracted to girls, then that’s the end of it.

The realization that he’s gay is like a revelation. It changes his definition of attraction, and with it, his perspective on all the locker room talk. Because all of a sudden, he knows they mean what they say. They actively _want_ to play with that girl’s tits, or eat her pussy, or get their cock in her mouth. They know what they want and if some of these guys are to be believed — they _do_ it.

Sid has no idea what he wants but he knows that whatever that might be — he can’t have any of it.

No hockey player has ever been gay and Sid can’t be the first. He’s fifteen and he already has eyes on him at the world stage, already has harassment and dirty hits thrown at him in every game, just for being better than the other kids. Sometimes he feels like his own teammates resent him. 

Sidney knows the hockey player narrative. Play hockey, get drafted, go pro, marry a beautiful woman, have adorable kids, retire. At some point, if you’re good, you might win the Stanley Cup. Sidney knows the gay narrative, too, from what movies and TV shows he’s seen that show it. Realize you’re gay, angst about it, come out, get bullied, get killed by either the bullies or yourself. At some point, if you’re lucky, you might get a boyfriend. At least, that’s the only narrative he’s ever seen.

Normally, Sid likes narratives. He likes them like he likes having a game plan laid out in front of him, likes the predictability, likes knowing what to do next. He doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like having two conflicting narratives that could both become his life.

But then he thinks about it and realizes, having too possible narratives means he gets to choose one. Gets to choose which one his life will be. He can choose whether he wants to be a hockey player, or be gay.

He chooses to be a hockey player.

 

 

 

Sid wakes up the day after the Cup win to the text message tone from his phone. It’s from Flower, some ridiculous baby graphic with the caption “it’s a boy!” so Sid knows that probably all of Pittsburgh knows about Shearsy’s slip-up by now. He hopes Tanger at least had the sense to keep it within the team and not mention it to the beat reporters, who are liable to tweet it as funny or, god forbid, heartwarming.

Sid deletes the message, tosses his phone onto the sheets and stares up at the ceiling. He’s trying hard not to think about Conor calling him ‘dad’ and he’s trying really, really hard not to wonder if Flower’s message is the kind of thing he would get if he actually were about to have a kid.

Because the thing is, while a teenaged Sidney may have decided _not_ to be gay, it just — well, it doesn’t work like that. And over the years, Sid has come to realize that completely repressing his sexuality does not make for a happy life, even if he does have hockey. Coming out is still beyond his scope, but he has hooked up on occasion, discreetly. Even, in his more daring phases, dated men, until inevitably the relationships caved under the stress of Sid’s life being both extremely public and deeply closeted.

So in the end, Sid doesn’t have a partner, doesn’t have children of his own; all he has are awkward, impossible crushes and memories of rookies who call him ‘dad’ and run away.

 

 

 

Okay, so the Geno thing started like this:

Evgeni Malkin has been in America for a handful of weeks now. He speaks limited English and he has Sidney backed up against the wall of the equipment room, because for them, communicating is easier with their bodies than their tongues. Not that their tongues don’t have anything to do with it; Geno’s is in Sidney’s mouth right now, which sends a pretty clear message in itself.

Geno’s hand is also in Sid’s pants, which, oh. He’s not jerking Sid off, his hand is just, just kind of _there_ , and it’s — it’s warm and large and Sid doesn’t know if he’d rather Geno stroke him or never move his hand ever again. He thinks maybe he should be touching back, somehow, so he moves to palm Geno’s ass. Geno groans into their kiss, and Sid feels it in his teeth, and also his dick, and the pit of his stomach, and kind of everywhere at once. It’s pretty great.

Sid thinks back to when he met Geno, a couple weeks ago, how he had seen the Russian’s heavy-lidded eyes and lopsided lips and short, curling hair and hadn’t thought that much of him, except for his hockey skills. Now— right now Sid wants to feel that hair in his fingers. Right now Sid is a little bit obsessed with that mouth, never knew mouths could feel like this, against his own. Right now he wants to look at Geno’s eyes and find out what kind of feeling is there.

Sid pulls back from the kiss — accidentally hits his head on the wall, he does it so fast — but he doesn’t get the chance at eye contact because Geno’s ducking his head towards Sid’s neck. Sid has a brief flash of — _he can’t give me a hickey, what will I say when people ask?_ — but Geno just presses a gentle kiss to the skin there, nothing more. It makes Sid shiver.

Sid does get to touch his hair, though, clenching his fingers in it as Geno pulls his hand out of the waistband of Sid’s pants. He still has his head tucked against Sid’s neck; Sid can feel his breath, hot and heavy on his collarbone. Sid kind of really wishes they were still kissing, so he turns and nuzzles the side of Geno’s head in the hopes of enticing him back to Sid’s mouth.

It works; Geno locks their lips together, swallowing Sid’s sigh as their bodies press together. His hands have settled on Sid’s thighs and he’s trying to coax them apart, an idea which Sid is, frankly, pretty happy to entertain.

And that’s when things start to go wrong, and it happens like this:

Geno grinds their hips together, and Sid groans out loud. Geno chuckles, so Sid pulls back to glare at him. Geno just smiles and presses his face into Sidney’s neck again — Sid is starting to think Geno maybe has a neck thing — and that’s when Sid’s eyes slide over the crest of his shoulders and he spots a stack of hockey sticks against the opposite wall. It distracts him because even at this distance he can tell which stick is whose. Like, that one is Army’s, and there’s Talbo’s, and that’s—

And all of a sudden Sid realizes that he’s in the _equipment room_ , grinding on some _guy_ who knows maybe three sentences of English, total, and that anyone could walk in at _any time_ and see them.

Sid plants his hands against Geno’s shoulders and shoves him off. Geno stumbles backward, making a sound of confusion, while Sid sinks to the floor.

He can’t do this, damn it. He’s already decided to be a hockey player, not gay, and making out with a guy in the equipment room is very definitely gay. And he can’t do that. He doesn’t get to have this. Sid buries his head into his hands, taking deep breaths and praying to calm down. He doesn’t look up until his erection has fully wilted, and when he does, Geno is gone.

That’s good. Right?

Sid waits a few minutes, just to be safe, then goes back to the locker room, where Mario is waiting for him. Almost everyone else is gone, but he can hear one of the showers running. With the way Gonch is waiting around, Sid assumes it’s Geno who’s using it. Sid lets Mario lead him out to the car and pointedly doesn’t think about Geno in the shower, doesn’t think about Geno at all.

 

 

 

Sid is thinking about Geno. He has his phone open, staring at their last text conversation — right after game five against San Jose — where Sid had sent, _We’re gonna win the next one,_ and Geno had replied, _sharks no chance )))_

Looking at it now makes him smile because, they were right. They did win. They won it all. Sid thinks about what happened last time they won the Cup and, in a fit of impulse, types out _Come over_ and almost sends it. Almost, because then he thinks about what happened the morning after, and deletes it instead.

Sid and Geno have hooked up three times since that first incident in the equipment room. Once after their first Cup together, and two nights in a row after the lock out ended. That time, Sid had convinced himself it meant something, that maybe they were finally starting something, but he woke up the second morning and Geno was gone. Just like the equipment room and the morning after the Cup. And in every aftermath he has avoided Sid, refused to meet his eyes, for weeks after.

Sid’s flight to Nova Scotia is in a couple of days. He knows Geno flies back to Russia the day after. After the first Cup, Sid pretty much threw himself at Geno, who touched him hesitantly and murmured, “You want this?” like he hadn’t been the one to drag Sid into the equipment room and practically devour him. It was so ridiculous Sid didn’t know what to say, just pulled Geno flush against him and let his hips do the talking.

Then in the morning Sid woke up to find the Cup in bed with him and Geno nowhere to be seen. 

Sid’s not looking for a repeat of that (one photo circulating of him spooning the Stanley Cup is more than enough, thanks) but if Geno shows up on his doorstep — he’s not going to turn him away, either.

So Sid resists the temptation to text Geno and opens a text to Shearsy instead. Sid is determined to prove that he is capable of taking a joke, so he sends, _Have a great summer, son_.

Five minutes later, Conor sends a text back. It just says, _oh my god._

Then, a couple seconds after that: _thanks, dad._

Sid swallows around the lump in his throat. He can’t really explain why that makes him happy. He tries really hard not to glow for the rest of the day, but it’s a futile battle.

 

 

 

But then the thing is, Sid spends the next few days in Pittsburgh, waiting to see if Geno is going to come. It’s a little pathetic but Sid is kind of expecting him to show; they hooked up after the last Cup, so logically, they should hook up after this one. Geno must realize that. So Sid mostly stays home, because he doesn’t want to miss Geno when he comes.

The first day is quiet. Well, sort of. He takes texts and phone calls from friends and family, mostly congratulations, but nothing from Geno just yet. He tells himself that’s fine. It’s — lonely, disconcertingly so, in a way his house in Pittsburgh doesn’t normally feel, and the lack of contact from Geno for a whole twenty-four hours doesn’t fully explain the feeling. But that’s okay, he rationalizes, because he’s heading back to Nova Scotia soon enough anyway.

On the second day, Geno texts him. _you have kid not tell me?? ha)_ which Sid thinks is about Shearsy. Sid almost types ‘come over’ again, but he doesn’t. Another, crazier part of him says to type ‘we should have kids together,’ but he doesn’t, because that would be completely stupid and also weird. In the end he types nothing and doesn’t respond at all.

He’s also beginning to form a worrying idea of why his house feels so empty. It’s something he maybe should have seen sooner — he’s been teased about his biological clock’s ticking for years now, after all — but. But it’s never been so obvious to him before, like he’s just run face first into a brick wall of ‘I want to be a father.’ He’s always known he wants to have kids, someday, but it’s always stayed a _someday_ thing and suddenly _someday_ feels insurmountably far off. He wants it now.

But all he can do is grit his teeth and pack for his return to Cole Harbour. He’s got a school full of — oh, crap — over a hundred tiny, adorable children in hockey gear for him to coach.

Sid is quickly realizing that he’s been setting himself up for heartache for a long, long time.

 

 

 

At the Hockey School, it’s about all he can do not to actually kidnap someone else’s child. There are one hundred and fifty students; surely he could make off with just one without notice. Maybe even two or three, if he’s crafty.

They’re all just so cute, is the thing. All chubby cheeked and gap toothed and looking up at Sid like he’s the coolest person ever and he can do no wrong. Which he knows is probably because he’s Sidney Crosby, and sort of famous, but it’s still the way he imagines kids that age look up at their parents, so it stills the breath in his throat all the same. He’s utterly charmed by all of them.

When it gets especially bad, and he’s not sure his heart can take much more without going full Goblin King and stealing children — not even that many children, just, like, three — he texts Shearsy. It’s all under the guise of the now-running joke that Sid is Conor’s dad, but Sid finds himself taking it to heart perhaps a bit more than he should. He’s not about to admit that to anyone, ever, under any circumstances, though. Especially not to Flower.

_You taking care of yourself?_

_uh yeah? why do u ask_

_What kind of father would I be if I didn’t check in on you every once in a while_

_idk, a cool one maybe?_

_Don’t take that tone with me young man._

_its true though you’re a lame dad. you’re the lamest dad to ever dad_

_Eat your vegetables and do a bag skate._

Sid has no idea what this is going to be when training camp comes, when they’re face to face again. For now he’s content to enjoy the warm feeling it gives him, even if it does occasionally lead him to wonder if he couldn’t just adopt Shearsy and be done with it. The nice thing about emotions is that they’re all in his head and no one ever has to know he has them.

Then, of course, his little sister always has to be around to ruin that.

“So is it just me,” Taylor says out of nowhere one morning, over breakfast at Sid’s place, “or have you gone from like an eight-point-seven to a full out ten on the baby hungry scale?”

Sid nearly chokes on his eggs. Taylor doesn’t even have the good grace to wait for him to stop coughing, just soldiers on, “Because, you know, I always figured you founded the School for a chance to vicariously live out your dreams of fatherhood without actually, like, going all in and knocking someone up, but you’re being especially obvious about it this summer and I think the Hockey Moms are catching on.”

“I’m not going to... knock someone up,” Sid says awkwardly. He doesn’t like the phrasing that much and, well, it’s true. He’s almost certainly not going to get anyone pregnant; none of his partners so far have had a uterus, and he’s not about to start seeking out people who do just to have a baby with them. That would be... creepy, to say the least.

“I’m just saying, maybe you should. It’s getting kind of sad. Mom and Dad are ready for grandkids, I’m ready to be an aunt — I’d be the best aunt and you know it.” She pauses, considering. “And you’d be an okay dad, I guess.”

“I’m not getting anybody pregnant,” Sid repeats firmly.

“Date a single mom,” Taylor suggests. “There’s at least twenty with kids at your school.”

“I’m not going to date a woman for her children.” He’s not going to date a woman, period. But his sister doesn’t know that. None of his family knows that. The only people he speaks to on a regular basis who know that are Geno, Mario, and Jack Johnson; the rest are one-night stands or exes.

“Adopt?” Taylor says, gesturing lazily. A piece of egg falls off the fork in her hand as she does, and she frowns at it.

“That’s—” Sid starts. Stops. “That’s...” He swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. _Can_ he adopt? “I could, couldn’t I?”

Taylor looks up quickly from her attempts to retrieve her lost egg, which refuses to stay on the end of her fork, eyes wide and bright. “Wait, really?”

“I could adopt,” Sid says again, mostly to himself. He’s smiling now, and so is Taylor, and the sudden _possibility_ of having kids of his own is intoxicating. If the realization that he wanted kids was like running into a brick wall, then the realization that he _can_ have them is like a demolition. It’s almost — he thinks, in a brief fit of blasphemy — almost better than hoisting the Stanley Cup. 

He’s Sidney Crosby and he can do anything he wants to, up to and including the totally legal acquirement of children.

He could.

He could. 

(He wants at least three.)

 

 

 


End file.
